Indian Summers and Stormy Autumns
by Enelson Bridwell
Summary: In the autumn of 1985, after leaving San Francisco to try and start a new life in New York, Jessica Drew (Spider-Woman) thinks she may have found a man who can finally accept her for who she is. But has she? And even if she has will a dead father's dark legacy dash her hopes of a new life with a man whom she loves and will love her back, both in and out of costume?
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

One of the bank robbers roared as he knocked the sign that read _September 04, 1985_ , off the counter top. To Robert the four young men looked lean and desperate and scared in spite of their aggressive snarls as they demanded the tellers empty the cash drawers.

Robert, like the other tellers, did as he was told while trying to note any identifying marks or features that the nylon stockings over the robbers' heads didn't cover. He knew the police were on their way and just hoped that the robbers knew that to, and thus would be out quickly.

The robber who covered the guard and the doors looked particularly excited and Robert was worried he might shoot the guard just out of pure adrenal surge. "Take it easy. Take it easy," Robert said. "Nobody is going to try to be a hero."

"Then hurry the $%# up!" the goon in his face said.

Then the safety glass doors shattered inward as four metal snakes lanced through them. The first hooked to the right and whipped around the crook watching the door. His pistol cracked off two wild shots before the metal snake slammed him into the wall, and it clattered to the floor. The robber's three companions spun around but not quickly enough to avoid grappling steel whips that coiled around them and pinned then to the floor.

Then Robert saw that the living cables were not snakes at all, as Dr. Octopus stepped through the frame of one of the front doors.

"It's okay everyone. Just sit tight until the police are here. Everything is under control." Dr. Octopus looked over the top of his glasses, the lenses of which quickly went from tinted to clear in response to the indoor lighting.

It only took moments for Robert to know that, in spite of the four-tentacled harness this was not the Dr. Octopus that he'd seen on TV. Not the one who had died pulling his experimental reactor into the river with him. This man looked similar but younger and taller.

"The police should be here in a minute. They may want to take statements from you, but everything is going to be fine." As this Dr. Octopus spoke three of his tentacles passed all of the robbers to the fourth one, which gripped them tightly as the harness's wearer checked out the room.

"Are you Dr. Octopus?" a woman asked.

This new Ock smiled. "I am now, Ma'am." Then he looked towards Robert. "Sir? After the police are done, how long do you think it will be before you will be open for business again?"


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Jessica Drew shut the door behind her and flipped the deadbolt. She was glad to be home again though with an apartment this low end she wasn't sure why. Her office was better for what it was, but it wasn't like she could live there. Maybe she just hadn't been here long enough to think of it as home. It certainly was preferable to the shabby hotel room she had spent her first week in New York in.

She set her purse on the counter and hoped that her private investigation business would take off soon and permit her to move someplace better.

The light on her answering machine winked at her but it could wait until after she'd changed.

Dressing and undressing quickly was a skill Jessica had long ago mastered and within a minute she was in the shower lathering herself up and hoping to make the most of what was, so far, the best part of her day.

After she'd showered and changed into some shorts and a t-shirt she had a quick dinner then sat back in her pea green overstuffed chair in front of her small TV. The chair was ugly to look at but it had been with her now through two moves and she doubted she could find anything more comfortable.

The news was mostly about Hurricane Elena and the discovery of the wreck of the Titanic. The local news also covered a bank robbery today that had been thwarted by a Reginald Octavius, the son of the late Otto and Rosalie Octavius, who'd been wearing another version of his father's titanium tentacle harness, which he insisted was perfectly safe and much improved over the original. Apparently he had been at the bank, not far from where Jessica lived, to set up an account for his new company, Prismatic International, which he assured the interviewer, had no plans to try and create a self-sustaining fusion reactor anytime soon.

This Mr. Octavius was certainly handsome, Jessica thought, with broad shoulders and thick brown hair, and those glasses that gave him a gentle intellectual look, and he sounded harmless and well-intentioned, but with the troubled legacy of his father's work hanging over him Jessica thought he might bear closer investigation to see what he was really up to.

But that would have to wait until it got darker and the streets cleared.

Jessica turned down the TV's volume and got up to make some phone calls. She decided she'd go out after _Moonlighting_ got over at ten.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

By ten fifteen Jessica, as Spider-Woman, was high aloft over Queens and heading to Far Rockaway, where Prismatic International had its office. The sky was clear and a stiff wind lifted her on its updrafts over the tiny houses, buildings, and faint twinkling lights of cars along the Nassau Expressway that passed below her. Before she had moved here she imagined, as she supposed many people did, that New York City was all skyscrapers, brownstones, and apartment complexes. It wasn't that she really believed it to be the case; it was just where assumption took her when she pictured New York.

Jessica had studied a map carefully and when she could make out the triangular intersection of the expressway with Rock Hall Road below, she leaned and adjusted her arms, with her suit's small glider-like wings, and gradually descended.

The houses here looked dingy and mostly dark, which was to be expected she guessed, this time of night in the middle of the week. The scattered streetlights cast circles of luminance beneath them.

She had expected the Prismatic office to be a sterile looking office building or a run down warehouse, or maybe a suite in an industrial park, but when she found the address it was none of those things. Instead it was aluminum sided garage sort of building, with two large roll-up doors. The main one was at the front with a smaller one at the side. A security fence surrounded the lot, but of course was of no impediment to her.

Jessica touched down lightly on the roof and waited for a minute to rest her arms and listen for signs that that she had been detected.

There were none.

She crouched low and crept along the peak of the shallowly angled roof and looked over the side. Below her, in the southern side of the building was a sliding glass door. She reached over the edge and, in a spider-like fashion, slipped over the side and climbed headfirst down the wall.

She stopped and clung to the wall directly over the sliding glass door. The glow of lights and the flicker of a television screen could be made out through the curtains that covered the glass. She couldn't hear any movement or anyone talking but it seemed certain that someone was inside.

Jessica turned in place and went back up the wall and across the roof and crawled down to the front door, next to the large roll-up garage door.

She stopped again to listen for sounds of movement or detection and then flipped to the ground lightly. An outside light came on, probably because of a motion detector. Jessica pressed herself into the doorway and listened again, and again only the ordinary sounds of Far Rockaway at night were evident.

Jessica forced the door carefully with her superhuman strength and felt the locks snap and give way. She paused for a second and quickly stepped inside.

It looked like a garage, just as she had expected. A dark metallic blue van was parked inside. Boxes and crates of all sorts were stacked against the back wall and long florescent lights hung from the ceiling high overhead. In the southwest corner was a staircase that looked like it lead up to a loft from which someone could look down over the main area below. She couldn't see any signs of any laboratory or high tech equipment. Of course who knew what could be in the boxes or up in the loft?

Jessica quietly moved towards the boxes and crates in the back, careful to keep her eye on the small door that most likely lead to whatever office it lead to, from where she had seen the light coming from through the curtained door outside. She was almost there when the overhead fluorescents flared to life.

The titanium limbs lashed through the door then pulled Octavius into garage after them. "What the Hell are you doing in here?" Ock strode forward, looking down on her like some menacing alien walker from H.G. Wells.

Jessica crouched, ready to leap and dodge in any direction, while keeping one arm in front, ready to deliver a bio-electric blast. "Sorry I couldn't wait for an appointment Ock. Just thought I had better check this place out to make sure you weren't assembling any nuclear accidents in here."

"Well." He paused. "I guess that was to be expected.

"But I would have expected it more from Spider-Man than you."

"Well maybe he decided to take the night off?" Jessica held her ground, ready for action.

Octavius retracted his upper tentacles the other two, lowered him to the floor. "Well, have you satisfied your curiosity?"

"I don't know. I just got here." Jessica relaxed a bit. "But everything looks clean so far."

Octavius smiled, "Well it is a little late to start digging through boxes if that was your plan. Why don't you come inside and we can talk and I can offer you some tea?"

"Okay." Jessica straightened. "You know I think I'd like that.

"Sure," Octavius said. "Just let me take care of this door first."

Jessica's eyes followed as a titanium limb shot out and snatched up a large crate and used it to block the broken door. "Sorry about your locks," she said.

"Don't worry." He stepped aside from the door which apparently lead to his living area and gestured her in. "It's not a big deal." He smiled again. "I won't bill you."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

As Spider-Woman had walked past him Octavius thought he detected a fresh clean, just-out-of-the-shower smell, and the hint of her shampoo from her lustrous black hair.

He was glad she had accepted his offer of tea. He didn't have any coffee. He didn't care for hot drinks in general, especially not anything so hot it needed to be sipped. He had tea because he could drink it cold. He was mostly a diet soda drinker.

"I have some Diet Coke also if you'd like?"

"No thank you," she said.

"Make yourself comfortable then." Octavius filled the kettle and put it on the stove in his kitchenette. He reached up and got two cups from the cupboard. His first instinct was to use his tentacles for this to show off a bit, but in spite of all his practice with them he felt it safer to not overdo it trying to make a good impression. Besides he had a better idea.

He turned back to the living room. "It should be hot in a minute."

Spider-Woman sat lightly in his recliner.

"Well I don't think I'll need these again tonight." The three-fingered hands on the tips of his tentacle gripped each of the eight bolts in turn that held the harness around his midsection and spun in place loosening each one. Then they lifted the harness off of him and walked back into the bedroom. Octavius then tugged on his ESU t-shirt to get rid of the wrinkles that wearing the harness had left.

"That's neat," she said. You don't even need to be wearing them.

"No." He smiled again, and sat down on the couch.

"So I thought you were a California girl?" he said. Yet here you are in New York and with a British accent."

"Well I decided to give the East Coast a try instead and I am from England originally."

Octavius couldn't see much of her eyes through the white mesh of her mask but he watched her mouth for some sign of reaction. He noticed none, but her lips were full and her face lovely, from what he could see of it. As she shifted in the chair and crossed her legs, he took in her long and shapely curves which her red and yellow catsuit emphasized rather than concealed.

"Well welcome to New York then," he said. "I hope you've found it to your liking so far."

"It's been alright actually." She had just the hint of a smile. "And how have you liked it here? The last address and phone number I could find for you was far upstate, in Ithaca."

"Yes, that's where I grew up. He sat back and tried to look relaxed and open to answering her questions.

"I see you have an ESU shirt," she continued. "Is that were you went to university?"

"No," he replied. "If it matters I have a couple of Cornell shirts in the laundry bin." He let out a single chuckle and pushed up his glasses. "I sold the house there to get money to buy this place, and the get the funds to start up my business."

"And what is your business to be?" she asked.

The kettle began to whistle.

"Hold on to that thought." Octavius held up his hand and went to get the tea. "Would you like any milk or sweetener?"

"No thank you," Spider-Woman replied.

Octavius filled his own cup about half with milk, then returned and handed her her cup. "Now as I was about to say, I plan for Prismatic International to do research and development," he sipped at his tea as he sat down again. "Engineering and then maybe manufacturing latter at some point."

"And do you think you'll be able to compete with Stark?" she asked.

"Well, I'm not blindly optimistic, but I think I'll do alright. I have some ideas of and there are plenty of potential customers who can't afford to do business with Stark and will be looking for a smaller operation to see to their needs."

"Ideas? Like maybe continuing your father's work?" she sipped her tea.

"No. Not in the foreseeable future anyway. I intend to focus on much smaller and safer work.

"My father, may God rest his soul, became so emotionally invested in his work that it made him careless. As a great professor of mine used to say, success is a trap. It convinces people that they can't fail."

This time she was clearly smiling.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

It was almost three in the morning when Jessica left and set off toward home. She flew beneath the clouds and yet metaphorically her head was there. She didn't feel tired, in fact she felt good, although certainly ready for bed. But she knew that her late night visit would likely come back to haunt her when she felt like a zombie tomorrow.

The buildings and streets below were mostly dark and empty.

There was something about Redge; he'd asked her to call him Redge, different from any man she'd ever been attracted to before. He was handsome for sure, but she'd seen better, but he was also funny and smart and seemed open and honest, which was something she had been unprepared for.

He may have lacked Jerry's hard sexy edge and aura of danger, but Jerry's confidence had turned out to be mostly an act, probably to cover up his fragile self-image as a James Bond-type. Jerry had used her, not only for sex, but to bolster his inner weakness as well. He'd resented her for her independence and unwillingness to be ready and willing when he wanted her, out his way when he didn't, and submissive in general.

David had seemed caring and sensitive enough, but that agreeable outer shell had masked a lot of insecurities and hang ups.

Redge seemed confident without arrogance. Was he caring? And would he be protective without being demanding or domineering? She hoped so and that was how she imagined him, but she had to admit that she had no idea. It was a first encounter and she had been in costume and behind a mask. How would he be when she was just Jessica, and not Spider-Woman?

She was over her neighborhood now and circled looking for possible watching eyes. When she didn't see any, she quickly dove down and slipped in the window she had left unlocked.

Her apartment was warm, or at least in seemed like it after having been up in the sky. She would have liked to have had another shower but she had already been up too late already for a work night, and with her detective agency having just opened every night was a work night.

She slipped out of her tights, removed her sports bra and slipped a t-shirt over her head. She wished she could have given Redge her phone number, but at least she had his, and he had invited her to stop by or call any time.

As she slid under the covers she decided she would certainly take him up on his offer. If she was wrong about him, and if he was up to something nefarious, he certainly bore closer scrutiny.

And if she was right about him and he was exactly as he seemed, or even better, then he bore even closer scrutiny, but in that case for much more desirable reasons.

She smiled in the dark before drifting off to sleep.


End file.
